Siemens is developing a thermal energy storage system for renewable energy integration that could deliver some of the cheapest solution in the high-power, high-capacity and long-duration energy storage range.

Energy Storage

The results from National Grid’s recent Enhanced Frequency Response (EFR) 200 MW tender in the U.K. show storage can deliver big savings on frequency control procurement and that batteries could be cost-effective options to provide super-fast frequency response just as changes in the generation mix are increasing the future need to control grid variations, experts told Energy Storage Update.

Future success of Southern California Edison’s (SCE) Preferred Resources Pilot (PRP) to deploy a fleet of clean, distributed energy resources to offset load growth in Orange County, Calif. may signal the solutions that other utilities and developers can use to replace the need to procure new fossil-fuel-fired generation in other densely populated areas, experts told Energy Storage Update.

Statoil’s battery storage pilot at the Hywind offshore wind farm presents strategic value beyond the immediate business benefits for the farm as the company narrows in on the most profitable stack of storage applications in full-scale offshore wind farms and other renewables, where it sees growing opportunities, said Sebastian Bringsværd, Statoil’s project manager for Batwind.

Residential solar-plus-storage is likely to be the first market in Australia that will offer opportunities for profitable storage revenue streams, Tim Robinson, energy and technology expert at PA Consulting Group, told Energy Storage Update.

Investor interest in energy storage is very strong even as venture capital (VC) funding in the sector in the first quarter of 2016 was down 28% year on year and down 50% from Q4 2015, according to Gordon Mackay, director of the Global Industrial Group at Citi Bank.

Assessing the bankability of project controls will be key to mitigating the risks and monetizing more value from energy storage systems moving forward, according to Michael Kleinberg, senior consultant at risk management company DNV GL.

PV with lithium-ion battery storage is more cost-competitive than CSP for storing up to four hours of energy, based on today’s technology and cost, said Tim Polega, executive head of Saudi Aramco's renewable energy program.

New York utility Consolidated Edison (Con Edison) plans to launch a pilot virtual power plant (VPP) project in June to test out the business case for integrating aggregated fleets of residential solar-plus-storage systems into the grid, Jamie Brennan, director of demonstration projects at Con Edison, told Energy Storage Update.

Rising competition in the burgeoning residential storage sector is prompting more and more US home battery providers to turn to software to expand their services and grow their market share with new value streams.

The US could see a growth spurt in solar-plus-storage projects in 2016 and 2017 if the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) expands its energy investment tax credit regulations to include more energy storage uses, said Jigar Shah, co-founder of Generate Capital, a specialty finance company that builds, owns, operates and finances energy, water, agriculture and basic materials infrastructure assets.